There's no doubt that Howard, who died in 2011, had the respect of booksellers across the country and had been called upon to appraise small and large collections of books, a skill he developed during more than 40 years in the business.

Eureka Books co-owner Scott Brown -- an Old Town bookseller who bid successfully for the remaining books in Seredipity's inventory -- said he had been visiting the Berkeley bookstore for more than 20 years.

"He did a huge number of appraisals," Brown said. Among those were the collections of Richard Brautigan and William Saroyan. The latter not only had a home full of books and documents, but had bought the house next door and filled it with the same, the Eureka Books co-owner said.

Howard also appraised the entire rare book library at Cal State Hayward, Brown noted.

"No one could compare to him," he said.

Others agreed. Not long after Howard's death from pancreatic cancer in March 2011, the online newspaper Berkeleyside.com ran Frances Dinkelspiel's profile of the iconic bookseller. An excerpt of that April 13, 2011 piece follows, the full piece may be found at berkeleyside.com (do a search for Peter Howard).

Serendipity Books is crammed top to bottom with books in every conceivable location: on shelves, on table tops, on the floor, in the rafters. The books in the store are only a part of Howard's vast collection, which he estimated last year was around 1 million volumes. There is a warehouse in Berkeley stuffed with boxes of books as well.

"There are books everywhere," said (Kerry) Dahm, (Howard's daughter). "There is the store. There is the warehouse with almost as many books in boxes as in the store. Then there is our house with bookshelves in every room, including the stairwell. He would often bring bags and bags of books home."

Howard soon developed a reputation as an astute rare-book dealer. He discovered and saved many important manuscript collections, as well as collecting and valuing works by both well-known and lesser-known authors.

Howard's collection covers many areas, including California history and western Americana. He was known for his collection of first editions of American and British literature, and has holdings of Ernest Hemingway, Henry James, Shakespeare, North Point Press, and fiction from countries around the world. Serendipity also has large collections of literary manuscripts, screenplays and little magazines.

"He was one of the major antiquarian book dealers of our time," said Victoria Shoemaker, a literary agent, close friend, and former neighbor of the Howards.

Howard made some notable purchases in his lengthy career as a bookseller.

In the late 1990s, he bought the 18,000-volume collection of Carter Burden, a descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and a progressive New York politician and businessman.

In 1991, Howard was offered the archives of Thomas M. Jackson, an Oakland grocer who had served as secretary for the California chapter of the NAACP from 1910 and 1940. After Jackson died, in 1963, someone took his papers to the Berkeley dump. Someone else rescued them and asked Howard to help them find a proper home. Howard sold the papers to the Bancroft Library.

Later in that decade, someone found 946 letters exchanged between two Japanese-American teenagers who met at an internment camp in Utah. Tamaki Tsubokura and David Hisato Yamate were separated for a few years during the war, and they wrote to one another frequently. These letters were also dumped at the Berkeley landfill and later rescued. Howard brokered their sale to the University of Utah.

Howard was a blunt and forthright man. After he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a year ago (2010), Berkeleyside contacted him to ask about his health and the store.

"There's nothing to say," Howard said by telephone. "People die. We all die. Businesses end."

One of Howard's friends, Stephen Gertz, recalled his first encounter with Howard in "A Wake for the Still Alive: Peter B. Howard" on Booktryst.com.

He was standing in one of the aisles around 25 yards away from my vantage point and looked like an aged, unkempt and unshaven derelict marooned far too long, surviving on a diet far too short on calories," Gertz wrote.

"He was wearing a sarong-like thing wrapped around his waist, sandals, a rumpled shirt and a knit cap with earflaps. It seemed as if he had just come off a three-day binge on arrack, the liquor made from coconut sap. It was Peter Howard, proprietor of the legendary Serendipity Books in Berkeley, California, who appeared to be shipwrecked on Book Island."

But the gruff exterior hid a nicer side. Many of Howard's friends characterized him as generous and helpful and willing to go out of his way to help young book dealers get set up in business.

Gary Lepper, Howard's lawyer, said Howard helped him compile a bibliographical study of first editions, and then asked if Serendipity could publish it. That led to a lifelong friendship between the Howards and the Leppers that included many games of bridge, delicious dinners, and a friendly rivalry over the Giants, who Howard loved, and the Dodgers, who Lepper supported.

"He didn't do well with fools, or people he thought were delicatish, but if you hung in there you got a very good friend out of it," said Lepper.